Patrick West

For some years now Private Eye’s ‘Dumb Britain’ section has been regaling its readers with examples of contestants giving ridiculous and risible answers to questions on television quiz shows. You know the kind of thing, the fabulously stupid things people say when asked, say, who succeeded Henry VIII as the king of England – with David Lammy on his 2008 Mastermind appearance responding ‘Henry VII’. It’s no wonder you see people neurotically clutching these devices all hours of the day Yet we might not be laughing for much longer, and Private Eye might be forced to jettison that column altogether, if we are to believe Jeremy Vine.

You sometimes wonder if people who put together newspapers these days have ever heard the story about the boy who cried wolf. This was one of Aesop’s fables which taught children about the dangers of scaremongering in order to get attention, the moral being that if you persist in doing so, no-one will believe you in the end. If nuclear warfare is upon us, there’s nothing readers can do about it Certainly, sub-editors who write headlines to the effect of ‘We’re on the breach of World War Three’ seem unaware of its lesson, as do their superiors, who all hope that such attention-grabbing sensationalism will increase sales or garner more online hits.

The war waged by those in authority on those who make overt displays of patriotism shows no sign of relenting. This campaign against Englishness and Britishness has never been an open, honest one, undertaken with manifest intent. This is a devious war pursued through crafty bureaucratic means and framed in the timorous language of health and safety. This offensive began as a response to events last summer, when, under the banner of ‘Operation Raise the Colours’, many individuals took it upon themselves to attach St George’s and Union flags to lampposts throughout England. In response, many councils, prompted by complaints from some who felt ‘uncomfortable’, or run by those who feel uneasy at unrefined shows of patriotism, took them down on the grounds of health and safety.

What with the prospect of further resets with the European Union, and with British culture seemingly in a constant battle with those who would degrade and debase it, it’s easy to understand why some people are oversensitive to perceived threats to this country’s independence and integrity. Alas, sometimes this touchiness descends into out-and-out paranoia. Eurovision has long since descended into a tacky, hyper-camp circus act The flustered reaction to the news that this year's UK Eurovision entry is partly sung in German is a case in point. Following the disclosure that the song, Eins, Zwei, Drei, by Look Mum No Computer, not only has a chorus in a foreign language, but has lyrics which appear to disparage British culture – ‘Counting in English doesn't cut the mustard.

It was only a matter of time before an ultra-progressive, hard-left party with a fondness for voguish identity politics, enthusiasm for multiculturalism and morbid obsession with Israel came to preeminence in this country. This inevitability is the consequence of a demographic time-bomb just waiting to make its effects known. It’s no surprise that the Greens offer hope to that portion of a generation As a YouGov survey has revealed this week, the Green Party has now overtaken both Labour and the Conservatives to take second place in the polls, two points behind Reform UK. Their support now stands at 21 per cent, up four points in the week since their historic win in the Gorton and Denton by-election.

So much of what is commonly understood to mean multiculturalism has in truth been class warfare by other means. A great deal of it has entailed affluent, white middle-class types telling the white working-class that their culture and values are of unexceptional or lesser worth. Much state-sanctioned multiculturalism has been an exercise in scolding the proletariat for being unenlightened, denouncing them as bigots and racists when their behaviour fails to fall into line with modern, cosmopolitan, metropolitan mores.

If allegations of ‘family voting’ taking place at Thursday’s Gorton and Denton by-election prove substantiated, the incidents will not only mark a grave infraction of the law, they will give further weight to the fear that this country is becoming perilously fragmented, terminally Balkanised and mired in sectarianism. Polling had scarcely closed when, a few minutes after 10 p.m., Sam Coates of Sky News posted on X intelligence related to him by a team from Democracy Volunteers, a group of voluntary election observers, in which they claimed to have witnessed a total of 32 cases of family voting in 15 of the 22 polling stations in the constituency.

In politics, there has always been an assumption held by atheists, humanists and many liberals in general that those of a modern, secular persuasion act with autonomy and reason because they are unencumbered by religious belief. They believe themselves in possession of an intellect that needs no external crutch or sanction. While this enables them to achieve objective detachment, those who cling to religion can never attain such a refined plateau of enlightenment: their convictions are indelibly shaped and clouded by religious dogma.

The more excitable and less well-educated elements of the liberal left are forever apt to observe that politics today resemble those of the 1930s, being prone to denounce a development or policy they disdain as being ‘just like Nazi Germany’. To be fair, they have a point. It’s not just the street brawls we’ve seen in Manchester and Lyon over the last week, between hard left and hard right youths, that should arouse such unnerving comparisons. It’s also because we are living in an age of appeasement. And this time it’s the liberal left who are doing the appeasing. This was a textbook case of appeasement: not a tactical retreat to be dismissed as a one-off, but an action consistent with a sustained process of surrender This trend continues to make itself more obvious.

In the fevered imagination of those obsessed with implementing ever greater ‘diversity’, there is seemingly no object or aspect of life they won’t seek to change at all costs. Thus it’s no surprise to hear that the latest target of opprobrium is the British countryside itself. It epitomises the blundering ignorance of the global, Anywhere class who have been in charge for too long Following a Defra report in 2019 that revealed that some saw the countryside as 'being for white people and middle-class people', officials have spent the last few years working on changing that – by making the great outdoors more welcoming to ethnic minorities. National Landscapes, a charity mostly funded by Defra, has been busy overseeing the diversity drive.

It’s been a cherished belief of progressives over the decades that you change the way we think, and in turn transform society, by changing the kind of language we use. This stretches back to a 1980s strand of feminism determined to jettison default masculine terms such as "chairman" and "headmaster" and replace them with gender-neutral equivalents. Then there are today’s hyper-liberals, who believe they can erase binary thinking on sex by introducing expressions such as "pregnant people" or forgo "he" and "she" altogether and substitute everywhere with "they." Many radicals have imagined that linguistic revolution is essential to actual revolution. Unfortunately for these idealists, new research suggests that their faith has been misplaced.

At last, the BBC has been forced to admit what even the dogs on the street know to be true: that the corporation is guilty of ‘shoehorning’ diversity into its television drama output, in series such as Shetland and This Town, and making them feel ‘preachy’ and ‘inauthentic’ as a consequence. Productions which distort history deliberately and cynically are even more exasperating A large swathe of the viewing public believe that the BBC tries too hard to represent diverse groups in its drama, according to a report commissioned by executives, involving a survey of 4,500 adults.

Much has been written in recent years, and even recent days, about the threat posed to the mental wellbeing of children by malign external forces, whether it be X generating nude images of women, the misogyny spread by influencers such as Andrew Tate, or the welter of ‘misinformation’ available online. But a story at the weekend reminds us of one of the most formidable actors in this department, one that continues to warp and taint young minds: our education system. This constant drip of revelations and pronouncements merely reflects the dismal state of our education system A state-funded computer game, developed with government backing by councils in East Yorkshire, reminds teenagers they risk being referred to a counter-terrorism programme if they question mass migration.